Your post = $1 towards #realschoolfood

Thanks to Our Sponsors, every time you post using '#realschoolfood', $1 will be donated towards healthy school food programs

The Problem

The Solution

The Goal

Childhood obesity and diet-related disease are crippling our children’s futures. Take a look at the current state of our children’s health:

1 out of every 3 American kids are overweight or obese.

"Adult Onset" Diabetes has been re-cast as "Type II" because of how many children are now falling victim to it.

Scientists are predicting that the current generation of children will have shorter life expectancies than their parents, all because of their diets.

The sad reality is we are feeding our children to death in this country. The fast food industry spends more than $5 million every day marketing unhealthy foods to children. Nearly all (98%) of food advertisements viewed by our kids are for processed products that are high in fat, sugar or salt.

To make matters worse, most schools across the country are serving highly processed, heat-and-serve meals that reinforce the bad eating habits and food trends that have helped contribute to this crisis. So what can we do to change this?

Ensuring kids have access to healthy, fresh school food is a crucial part of the solution. More than 30 million children eat school lunch every day, and over 70% (22 million) of these kids come from impoverished households. The eating habits and food values they learn in childhood will follow them for the rest of their lives. So for now, while our kids are still young, and we’re still filling their lunch trays, we have an opportunity to shape the future.

We need to help schools move away from the highly processed, heat-and-serve food trend and work with them to serve scratch cooked food made with fresh, nourishing ingredients. Instead of treating our children for diet-related diseases, we can make sure their diets prevent these illnesses from ever taking hold.

Because when we make sure that our children's meals are cooked with real food, instead of food additives and chemicals, we set them up for a lifetime of healthy eating habits that help themgrow, thrive, and achieve.

The #RealSchoolFood campaign brings attention to one key issue: Our nation's schools must stop serving highly processed food and start cooking from scratch. Why? Because our children deserve REAL, healthy school food every day that will nourish their minds, bodies, and futures.

By giving chefs, celebrities, parents and schools the opportunity to raise their voices in support of real school food, we raise awareness, and work together to ensure that school food reform keeps moving forward. And for every person who participates through social media,$1 will be donated towards healthy school food programs across the country.

It's time to transition our nation's schools away from processed, heat-and-serve food to healthy scratched cooked meals.If we all spread the word, the louder the call-to-action becomes, and the more likely that change can and WILL happen.

Stand with us in the fight for real school food and join the campaign today!

Get Involved

Make a Sign that says #RealSchoolFood and snap a selfie holding the sign

Post the photo to your social media timelines with the #realschoolfood hashtag and one of the below captions.

** If posting to Facebook, make sure you make the post public so that we can track and count it towards a matched donation. **

Choose a comment

Other Ways you Can Help

Donate

Don’t have social media but still want to help our cause? Your donation can help us continue to change the way we feed our children. The Chef Ann Foundation has reached over 2.6 million children in more than 7,000 schools with healthier school food programs, but with over 98,000 schools in the U.S. we have our work cut out for us. We need the help of parents, food lovers and child nutrition advocates like you to help us speed up change.

Your support will help us provide salad bars and nutrition education programming to school lunchrooms, and online resources and on-the-ground technical assistance to school food operators. It only costs us $6.00 to reach one child in need all school year long. Thank you for helping us reach even more kids with the real, nutritious school food they deserve.

Our Sponsors

We are deeply grateful to the sponsors that have made this campaign possible. Their commitment helps us carry out our vision: ensuring that all children have access to healthy food at school. Thank you!

Lead Sponsor

Sustaining Sponsors

Supporting Sponsors

Thanks for joining us in the fight for #RealSchoolFood

"Over 30 million kids in the US eat school lunch every day – and they're at school for more than ten years of their formative lives. That's a massive opportunity to have a really positive impact on their wellbeing, setting them up for healthier, happier lives. It's an absolute no-brainer for me that we should be feeding our kids at school with proper fresh food, cooked from scratch. Please join me in supporting Chef Ann Foundation's #RealSchoolFood campaign and spreading this message."